Not Outwardly Emotional

So, I have a long history of just not really showing a great range of emotion. I basically have two settings: happy and mad. Every other emotion I basically keep to myself. If I am feeling down, people usually don't know it. If I am confused, I usually don't show it. And if I am really sad, I generally cover it up with a fake smile and try to move on.

As I have already talked about before, my grandpa died a little bit ago, and (weirdly enough) I have some dark humor to share. See, I went to go see my grandpa at the hospice. And it was hard to see him there. Hard enough that I actually cried. For anyone that knows me personally, I basically never cry. It's pretty hard to make me tear up for anything. I have watched Marley and Me twice. This isn't to say that I am stone cold or anything, (Marley dying is horrible) but I can't work up a lot of waterworks.

So, there I am, holding Grandpa's hand, tearing up. And he is looking sort of towards where I am, and I don't want his last memories of me to be of me sad, so I turn away into Sharon's shoulder. And she is tearing up because I am tearing up, and who walks in but my dad's weirdo brother, Chris.

The thing about my uncle is that he is certifiably weird. He didn't pass his psych test to become a police officer. (I know some cops, and they are the nicest people, so I can understand why they didn't take him, but still...) He says totally non sequitur things just to feel included in conversations. Sharon told a story about going to the bird rescue with Nathaniel when he was young and talked about one of the hawks getting loose, and Chris told the SAME story like twenty minutes later. He isn't a mean person or anything, he is just really odd, and super religious. While Grandpa was lucid, my uncle proceeded to hold his hand and say, "You're dancing with God, now; God is leading this dance." Grandpa was like, okay, whatever, bring me some chocolate pudding.

Any whose, back to me being sad and upset. So, Uncle Chris walks in and see me holding Grandpa's hand and my back. And instead of just leaving, (because this was the third time in twenty years I had even seen my uncle) he decides to tell me how his daughter was really upset about Grandpa, too.

Now, this may seem comforting to anyone else, You may even be saying, "What's the matter with you? He was just trying to help." What is the matter with me is this: I don't know him, I am very private about my emotions, and he was in my personal space.

"Yeah, I was just on the phone with Cece last night," he started saying, "she was sobbing so much, all I could make out was the words 'sailboats' and 'chocolate mocha.'"

I had no idea why he thought that was comforting. Firstly, Cece has visited my grandparents probably four times in her whole life. She is twenty-two. I have lived with my grandparents for whole parts of my summer, gone to movies with them, dinner with them, helped clean the house, learned how to play crocette, swam at the pool, and moved tables with them. I have spent almost every Christmas Eve with them, some Easters, and more than a few birthdays with them.

So the fact that she would be sobbing over people she doesn't even know pissed me off. The fact that Chris thought Cece being sad was comforting was annoying and weird, which pissed me off. (I mean, they are the Born Again Christians. They supposedly believe that there is some grand afterlife waiting on the other side, so they should probably be happy when people die.) And the fact that Chris decided to come into the room, when he had been perfectly fine out in the other room for the last ten minutes pissed me off.

And that was how I went from being really heartbroken to just plain mad.

In retrospect, that sort of made the rest of my last visit easier. I did get over the madness after finishing my coffee, and got to give my grandpa a final goodbye. I told him again how much I loved him and cared about him and kissed him on his forehead. And I didn't cry too much more after that. There was a little more waterworks, but thankfully Chris was nowhere to be seen. I got to have my cry all to myself, just the way I like it.